


The Heart Wants (What It Wants)

by afterbaedeker



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drabble Collection, Everybody Lives, Love, M/M, is love is love is love is love is love is love is love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 07:30:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12271788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterbaedeker/pseuds/afterbaedeker
Summary: A Mystrade romance told through a series of connected drabbles.I wrote this positively an age ago and despite being unposted it remains the tale that brings me the most pleasure to read, so it's time to share with my fellow Mystrade shippers. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I still do.





	The Heart Wants (What It Wants)

**(1) _There are a million reasons why I should give you up_**

Greg props himself up on his elbows, a bed sheet arranged across his naked thighs gathers in blanched bunches. He looks like the ravished subject of a Titian portrait: scarlet carpet underfoot, pale legs and silver haired torso set in relief against the starch white of the surrounding sheets. Greg’s hungry gaze is fixed on the hawkish face in the mirror across the room. 

“Emotional entanglements are,” the lips in the mirror purse deliberately, creating an expectant-filled silence, “unwise.” 

Greg smiles, one eyebrow arching at the words.

Mycroft narrows his eyes, before spinning to face Greg. “And you are amused.”

**(2) _But the heart wants what it wants_**

Greg shakes his head. “Just pleased to have a name, at last, for what we’ve got going on here. An _entanglement_.” He likes the way the syllables fill his mouth.

“You are being deliberately obtuse.”

“Nah,” disagrees Greg amicably. “Just unwise, which is par for the course when it comes to me and you.”

“Let me be clear then. This cannot continue.”

“No.” 

Mycroft cocks his head sharply at Greg’s serenely spoken disagreement. “No?”

Smiling brown eyes lock with arctic blue. “It _can_ continue. I don’t give a fig if it’s unwise.” Greg stands and kisses sense into the man.

****

**+++**

**(3) _You got me sipping on something_**

There is a crease of skin just beneath Greg’s jawline that captivates Mycroft. The plump pale line puckers when relaxed, and pulls tautly pink when stressed. Mycroft places his lips upon the scar; his nose angles against Greg’s throbbing pulse; his chin nuzzles against the bobbing of Greg’s throat. Mycroft tongues the smooth skin, revelling in the sensation after canvassing short spikes of stubble. It is intoxicating being permitted to explore and lay claim to someone so fully.

“Gregory,” he breathes against the special space where Mycroft’s senses are overwhelmed and surrender wholly to the other man’s scent, taste, touch.

**(4) _I can’t compare to_**

It is quite unlike any experience Mycroft has ever known: to be in the company of someone who trusts him implicitly, whose loyalty is without cost, whose presence is unsought. It is not an eventuality he had prepared for when honing his craft. Mycroft is uncomfortably aware that this is a disadvantage.

Mycroft finds it staggering that his own lamentably unremarkable features arouse someone as attractive as Lestrade. Beauty not being a bounty he ever took great stock in, Mycroft values other traits. But the groan that eases from Greg’s throat at Mycroft’s clever touch is testament to Greg’s attraction. 

****

**+++**

**(5) _Save Your Advice_**

Sally slides a pint of bitters across the grubby tabletop to her boss. They lift their glasses in a cursory cheers, before both taking large, thirst satisfying draws of their draught beer.

“So this bloke you’re seeing,” asks Sally without preamble, “is he trouble?”

The question causes Greg to splutter a cough he attempts to disguise with a hasty swallow of his drink. She holds up a hand to forestall her boss from further embarrassing himself.

“Do you think I’m a shit detective?”

“No!”

She nods with grim satisfaction. “Then let’s neither of us pretend you’re not shagging Mycroft Holmes.”

**(6) _‘Cause I won’t hear_**

At nearly fifty, Greg really had thought he had outgrown his unfortunate tendency to blush. The flustered heat that pinks his cheeks is, however, unmistakable. 

“What makes you think he’s trouble?”

Sally’s face assumes a mask of dull disbelief. “The surname, for starters.”

“He’s not Sherlock—”

“He’s worse,” interrupts Sally. “Unlike the Freak he’s got resources and influence.”

“And?” Greg can tell there is more to his sergeant’s misgivings.

“What happens when he wants the benefit of your position – with the Met, his brother, take your pick?”

“And I buckle?”

Sally’s gaze is all fiery defiance. “When you don’t.”

**(7) _You may be right_**

Greg smiles, soft-lipped and tender, his kind eyes crinkle. He sees now that Sally worries for the good man she knows him to be, fears there is no place for his brand of goodness in the mired world in which Mycroft reigns. 

“Then I guess we’ll have a mighty row.” Greg is accustomed to the sharpness of Mycroft’s mind, his acid hot acumen, the incisive heat of his words. He is also privy to the private man, exposed and vulnerable and aching for affection.

Sally remains unconvinced. “If it’s ever _more_ , I’m on your side.”

“Cheers to that,” toasts Greg.

**(8) _But I don’t care_**

They chink glasses, a tacit pact that whatever befalls the coupling of copper and minor government official Sally Donovan will stand by, and stand up for, her mate.

Mycroft Holmes is a man capable of many things: negotiating trade agreements, arranging arms détente, foiling the nefarious plans of those that threaten the defense of the Realm. Using his position to cripple an ex-lover’s career is simply too petty for Greg to seriously entertain.

Greg smiles, sips his drink and marvels at Sally’s support. Her heart is hard in ways that are self-preserving, but full for him for which he’s glad. 

_****_

**+++**

  


**(9) _The bed’s getting cold…_**

Greg wakes languorously; lying on his back he reaches out across rough cotton to feel warmth seeping from the sheets beneath his hands.

The only indication that Mycroft shared Greg’s bed is the precision with which the duvet is smoothed flat and pulled up perpendicular to the neatly arranged pillows on what Greg considers Mycroft’s side. Greg rolls over, bundling some of the bedding beneath his stomach as he repositions his head on the recently abandoned pillow. His eyelids flutter with pleasure, long lashes fan against tanned cheek, as he inhales the scent of orange blossom, teak, sleep and sweat.

**(10) _…and you’re not here_**

Later, when Greg wakes properly, he spies a notecard propped on the bedside table. To the unaccustomed eye it may look like an ordinary business card, but Greg knows better, recognising Mycroft’s calling card. The cream coloured stock has a single dark line bordering the bottom with the initials MH embossed in the centre.

Greg reaches out for the card, brings it close to his face to better read the stiff black strokes of Mycroft’s distinctive writing, and sniffs a laugh at the man’s spare style:

_Duty.  
\--M_

“Good morning to you too,” murmurs Greg to the empty room.

_****_

**+++**

**(11) _nothing I’ve ever known_**

Mycroft _knew_ , not through abductive inference or deductive reasoning, knew in a way Greg would say was _gut instinct_ , that something was wrong the moment Anthea paused outside his door.

Once she pushed through the threshold of his office her tread was steady, her poise unassailable, but Mycroft knew better than to lift his gaze to meet the apology in her eyes. 

“Sir.” The wooden expanse between them seems a necessary gulf; her hand outstretched offering no comfort, only confirmation of disaster in the form of a small black box. 

Mycroft takes the device and presses play. 

Anthea awaits instructions.

**(12) _I’m hoping that_**

Mycroft swallows, the sound loud as he damps down the bile that threatens to burn the breath from his lungs.

The screen shows Lestrade kneeling uncomfortably on rough cement, his awkward position suggesting his hands are tied behind his back and connected to his ankles. Dark stains create loose patterns on his shirt: stripes of blood and swirls of sweat. His beautiful face is bruised, his too soft skin split at the lip and the brow and the crown. 

“Who is responsible?” 

“The Walters family.”

Mycroft sneers. _Revenge_ – petty, personal, unrelated to him.

“See that Sergeant Donovan is properly resourced.”

**(13) _after_**

Sally squeezes Greg’s hand, smiling shakily as his stretcher is loaded into the ambulance.

“I’ll see you at the hospital, yeah,” she promises, voice convincingly steady.

“A’ight.” Greg swallows half his reply.

She watches until the ambulance is out of view before striding across the street. Before she can tap on the tinted glass of the conspicuously parked town car the window descends revealing Anthea, head bowed over her Blackberry.

“So you’re his bagman?”

Anthea sets her phone aside to appraise her questioner. “If you like.”

Sally flatly ignores the intensity of Anthea’s attention. “Yeah, well, thank you. Thank _him_.”

**(14) _I’ll survive_**

Greg duly obliges the anesthetist by breathing in large lungfuls of oxygen from the mask held above his mouth. He scans the room, taking in the blinking machines and the abundance of the artificial light. The sterile whites, antiseptic greens, and gurney greys all scream operating theatre. He’s not sure why he needs surgery, as he can’t quite make out the words the surgeon says. She has an intelligent face so he trusts she knows what she’s doing and gives into the pull of the anesthesia pulsing through his veins.

His mind cocoons his consciousness with thoughts of Mycroft Holmes.

**(15) _this fever_**

Relief when it comes is as swift and unstoppable as a tempest. Mycroft allows himself to slump into the release of tension: elbows perched on desk, forearms shielding his chest, his head hangs heavy in hands, fingertips pressing deeply, expertly, into the pressure points of his face. 

_“All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock.”_

Mycroft barks a mirthless laugh realising Sherlock, however fumblingly, had correctly identified his _Magnussen_ pressure point: his inability to inure himself from a broken heart.

When he exhales a hard breath it catches somewhere between a sigh and a sob.

**(16) _This is a modern fairytale_**

When Greg blinks back to wakefulness it is with Mycroft’s hand upon his heated brow. Greg turns into the touch until his lips are placed to kiss Mycroft’s palm. Kiss bestowed, Greg slackens back into half-slumber. Mycroft takes up combing his fingers through tangled strands of grey hair, carefully skirting crepe bandages.

“Did Circus rescue me?”

“There is no Circus.” 

Greg shushes him. “Spoilin’ my Tinker Tailor fantasies, you are.” 

“Your officers extracted you.” 

“Thanks to Control.” Greg laughs, hoarse and wheezy, at Mycroft’s bemused expression. “That’s you,” Greg explains.

Mycroft can’t help but smile at the slightly groggy confession.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and drabble headings taken from Selena Gomez's _The Heart Wants (What It Wants)_


End file.
